Fireflies by Ben Byrne Page A

again.
    â€œNext week, Nagoya,” I said. “Then Osaka. Kobe. We were going to burn the whole damn country to the ground.”
    Ward’s face scrunched up like paper.
    By July we were running out of places to bomb. The face in the mirror was twitchy, my body listless and unkempt. My CO ordered me to take a week’s leave, which I spent swimming around the reef at Tuman Bay, trying to shake my throbbing headaches and chronic dysentery, convinced that a stink of soot and burning flesh had ground into my skin. Floating on my back in the water. Staring up at the planes in the sky. The day I returned to duty, I was told to prepare for a new photo mission. We were to map out a bombing approach. To identify primary targets around the naval base out in the eastern city of Hiroshima.
    Ward was standing over by the window. He hurled out the remains of his cigar, and it flew into the night in a shower of embers.
    The next day at thirteen hundred. Operations staff hunched over my prints. LeMay suddenly turned and demanded a primary target. His bulldog face, for a moment, was that of my father.
    â€œThat white T-shaped bridge, sir,” I blurted. “See? Right in the centre of the city. Clear as day. Couldn’t miss it if you tried.”
    Ward pushed up the window. He turned to me in the darkness as I wiped the perspiration from my forehead.
    â€œAre you bothered by what you did up there, Lynch?”
    Floating over that charred plain one week later, eerie and desolate.
    â€œYou were just an observer, Hal.”
    I swallowed. “That’s right. I was just an observer.”
    The train emerged from behind a hill and, for a moment, the track curved around a stretch of coast. Black waves in the distance rippled with moonlight.
    He gave a sudden, jaw-cracking yawn.
    â€œOkay, Lynch. Maybe we should get our heads down.”
    I rubbed my eyes. “You’re probably right.”
    He looked up at the miniature berths, wincing. “Oh, my aching back . . . ”
    When we woke, the ruins of Tokyo were appearing in the grey light of dawn. Naked children stood outside ramshackle hovels at the bottom of the embankments, and waved up at the train as we passed. At the station, we slung our kitbags over our shoulders and made our way through the departing crowd. Ward held out his hand to me.
    â€œIt was good talking to you, Lynch. Look me up at the press club. There’s some folks you might be interested in talking to.”
    â€œOkay, Ward. Thanks.”
    â€œWell then. I’ll see you.”
    He held up his hand as he shouldered his way through the crowd, off to write up his piece about scandals and corruption. Eugene and I wandered blearily back to the Stars and Stripes office to file our own story: “The Touristic GI visits Historic Himeji Castle.”

11
    THE RYOKAN
    (HIROSHI TAKARA)
    I woke up in the cavern of the ticket hall to see my breath coming out in clouds. All around me, men and women were giving off little traces of vapour, like a horde of sleeping dragons. I stood up and picked my way around their mats, dodging the pools of milky vomit that stank like rotten soybeans. By the concrete staircase, an old man was shivering and clutching his wretched fingers over his eyes to shield them from the light that filtered down from above.
    Smallpox. The people in the tunnels had complained of headaches and chills at first. Then they started to shiver and moan. The rashes came next, spreading amongst them like wildfire: bubbly freckles that crusted into sores and spewed white pus all over their faces, as if they’d been stung by a swarm of wasps. The skin of the sickest ones stayed smooth as glass though. Eerie blotches of purple welled across their bodies like islands on a map. They died almost straight away, their mouths gaping, as if they’d been caught by surprise.
    I ordered the children to wear rags over their mouths and to stay well away from the sick. Even so, Koji came to